Vengeance

Johnny Hallyday got his gun.

About halfway through Vengeance, we find ourselves
in an empty field. Via an overhead shot we see a dozen or so gigantic,
cubical blocks being shoved forward like chess pieces. These blocks are
actually giant bundles of compacted garbage from a dump we’ve never seen
before. Their origin doesn’t matter. What matters is that our heroes
are behind some of the blocks. Thugs are behind the others. They all
have guns. And before we know it, a ballet of gunfire ensues, sending
arterial sprays into the atmosphere as bodies are felled with cartoonish
repetition.

We never return to this field.

When the Coen brothers accepted their long-overdue Oscar for No Country for Old Men,
they thanked their audience and the Academy for allowing them to play
in their own part of the sandbox. Nutso Hong Kong director Johnnie To
plays in a sandbox entirely his own, one where broken glass and bullets
peek through the grains, and where logic is as unwelcome as piss from a
neighborhood cat. If John Woo is the godfather of gun-fu cinema and
bullet operas, To is his bastard grandchild who refuses to take his
Ritalin, an unhinged filmmaker who transitions from focused gangster
noir like Election and campy psychedelic freakouts such as Heroic Trio with gleeful abandon.

Vengeance
finds itself somewhere between the grit of the former and the insanity
of the latter. It finds geriatric crooner Johnny Hallyday—the French
Elvis, as many know him—teaming up with ruthless hit men to lay waste to
the mobsters responsible for maiming his daughter (Sylvie Testud, whose
presence is befuddling) and killing her family. Of course, this being a
To film, there’s a twist—a bullet lodged in Hallyday’s brain, which
erases his memory. He has no recollection of what he’s doing or why he’s
doing it, so he simply lets his guns and scowls do the talking.

The ensuing carnage
is incredible, with gouts of bright magenta blood filling the air like
macabre clouds, and bodies flying like confetti. To, not impervious to
the derivative nature of his age-old plot device, amps up the style to
Soderberghian levels, with enough throbbing music and slow-motion shots
of sharp-dressed badasses being badass to give Danny Ocean pause. To may
not have a lot to say, but he certainly says it loudly, and in doing so
offers the kind of whiz-bang sleaze Hollywood so often forgets we
crave.